The highest transaction was priced at $3.25m.

Total unit sales value in the auction market plummeted 77.1% YoY to $10.44m from $45.59m in Q3 2017, EdmundTie & Company (ETCO) revealed. The firm believes that the cooling measures and the ghost month in August could have likely taken its toll on the auction market.

According to the firm, only nine units were successfully knocked down with five residential properties and four industrial properties totalling $7.78m and $2.67m, respectively.

“Whilst all eight of the nine units sold under the hammer were mortgagee sales, several owner’s sale listings were sold before or after the auction via private treaty,” the firm explained.

The quarter also observed that high quantum property sales dropped 46.8% QoQ as the highest auctioned property price was only at 3.25m. It was a strata-titled semi-detached property at Eleven @ Holland.

The market has seen residential buyers, especially those who are seeking to buy their second or more properties have adopted a wait-and-see attitude whilst sellers have yet to adjust their price expectations, ETCO head of auction & sales Joy Tan said.

“With this, as well as the current economic outlook and trade war negotiations, we expect the property market to be generally muted until after the Lunar New Year in February 2019,” Tan noted.

Adapted from Singapore Business Review September 28 2018